Spanberger Signs Data Center Accountability Order, Creates AI Task Force

Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger on September 18, 2026 unveiled Virginia’s Data Center Accountability Framework and signed Executive Order 22, a package of immediate state directives on data center transparency, environmental review, and energy costs that also establishes a rapid-response task force on artificial intelligence.

In its announcement, the governor’s office described the framework as the most comprehensive and aggressive data center accountability effort in the country, to be carried out through the order’s immediate directives, directives to state agencies, and proposed legislation for the 2027 General Assembly session. Spanberger said that in the years before she took office, data centers came to Virginia without a clear or coordinated plan to address their impacts on residents’ electric bills, water, land, air, and quality of life. “That changes today,” she said. “I have said many times that Virginia should be leading the nation in setting the highest standards for this industry.”

Framework Pillars and Policy Priorities

The full text of Executive Order 22 lays out five pillars that data center developers and operators must meet to do business in the Commonwealth: engage transparently with communities, protect the environment, improve affordability for Virginians, advance clean energy and grid reliability, and deliver a better deal for the workforce.

On transparency, the framework calls for banning nondisclosure agreements for commercial data center projects, eliminating by-right approval and requiring local approval of any data center using more than 25 megawatts of power, ending state subsidies for data centers in site development programs, and removing future large data centers from the state’s fast-track permitting process.

Environmental priorities include new standards for energy efficiency, water use, land impacts, and backup generation; an evaluation of the cumulative impacts of diesel backup generators paired with a requirement that existing and future facilities move to cleaner backup power; and expedited noise regulations. On energy costs, the framework calls for requiring utilities to allocate a more equitable share of transmission and generation costs to data centers and other large load customers, requiring stronger upfront financial commitments from developers, and allocating PJM Interconnection process costs driven by data center demand to those data centers. The remaining planks cover grid-reliability standards, limits on on-site natural gas generation, prioritized grid access for facilities investing in clean energy, local hiring and training goals, procurement priority for Virginia businesses, responsible contractor standards and apprenticeships, and support for project labor agreements.

Agency Directives and Deadlines

The order names the Office of the Chief Energy Officer as the primary lead for implementation and requires it to publish an initial Data Center Planning and Community Engagement Toolkit for local governments within 120 days, covering model disclosure templates, community-benefit agreement approaches, and mitigation best practices. Effective immediately, executive branch agencies and employees under the governor’s supervision may not enter into or require nondisclosure agreements that block public disclosure of material information about proposed commercial data center developments; existing contractual commitments are expected to be honored absent extraordinary circumstances.

The order also directs creation of a Virginia Local Energy and Accountable Data Centers (VA-LEAD) designation, a tiered scoring system modeled on the LEED and EnergyStar frameworks and covering energy and infrastructure impacts, water and land use, noise, workforce development, clean-energy investment, local materials, and community benefits, with proposed criteria and an implementation plan due to the governor by the end of calendar year 2027. The Virginia Economic Development Partnership, effective upon issuance, may no longer assist new data center projects with anticipated peak electrical demand of 25 megawatts or greater through the Virginia Business Ready Sites Program, expedited permitting, or similar discretionary programs.

The Department of Environmental Quality must expedite data center noise regulations and deliver a workplan within 180 days; complete a cumulative-impact review of diesel and other backup generation within 180 days, weighing measures such as retrofits of Tier II generators to Tier IV emissions controls and non-diesel alternatives; and expedite rules designating cooling water scarcity areas, with the Eastern Virginia Groundwater Management Area designated as one. Virginia Energy must submit responsible-siting recommendations within 240 days covering brownfield redevelopment, edge data centers, regional diversification, waste-heat co-location, and impacts on scenic and historic landscapes. The Chief Energy Officer must deliver methane-emissions recommendations within 180 days, and Virginia Works must develop project-level workforce data collection criteria in the same period.

Rapid-Response AI Task Force

Executive Order 22 also creates an AI Task Force co-led by the Chief Transformation Officer, the Counsel to the Governor, and the Secretary of Administration, supported by a new AI Policy Planning Unit within the Office of the Chief Transformation Officer. The task force is charged with addressing workforce-displacement and data-privacy risks, evaluating existing Virginia law for enforcement and regulatory options, assessing cybersecurity risks to state systems and critical infrastructure from AI agents and bots, and partnering with other governors and federal and international leaders.

The order directs the task force to coordinate with frontier AI developers, naming Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft, and to report to the governor continuously until she terminates it. The order’s text states that the federal government has not met the moment on AI risk and that states must do more in the absence of federal leadership. Executive Order 22 rescinds Executive Order No. 30 of January 18, 2024 and Executive Directive No. 5 of September 20, 2023, both issued by former Governor Glenn Youngkin; policies published under the 2024 order remain in effect unless replaced.

Reactions and Prior Actions

The governor’s release carried statements of support from state senators Lamont Bagby, Lashrecse Aird, Kannan Srinivasan, David Marsden, Barbara Favola, Schuyler VanValkenburg, Jeremy McPike, and Aaron Rouse, along with members of the House of Delegates. Speaker Don Scott said the plan ends Virginia’s previous approach to data centers, adding: “This is a moratorium on bad actors in this industry.” Supportive statements also came from the Virginia League of Conservation Voters, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the Southern Environmental Law Center, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and former U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm; Sierra Club Virginia Chapter director Connor Kish described the order as the strongest executive action on data center environmental impacts in Virginia the chapter has seen.

According to the release’s background section, Spanberger earlier in 2026 proposed and signed what it describes as the nation’s first statewide energy consumption tax on data centers, urged the State Corporation Commission to require data centers to pay for transmission infrastructure built exclusively for their operations, and signed more than a dozen bills tightening backup-generator requirements, water usage rules, and local impact-assessment tools. Heading into the 2027 legislative session, the release states, the governor looks forward to working with the General Assembly to write the standards permanently into Virginia law.